We all have those days. The ones where you still feel the pizza and ice cream you ate last night sitting in your stomach, when you wake up and you dread the moment you have to get up and put on something that requires a button to be closed, so instead you grab your sweats (that’s it, nice and stretchy), yet you still look in the mirror and try to convince yourself that you look good, that you are beautiful, pretty, attractive, fit, but nope.
All you see is ugly.
Those days when you look through your old Facebook albums back when you were 13 and hadn’t hit puberty and could eat an entire candy store and the worst thing that could happen is you would get a little hyper. Back in the day where you wore belly shirts and short shorts and never for a second saw yourself as ugly. Never worried about this thing called body image, self-esteem, confidence, never thought you were any less than anyone else. Not until you grew up. Not until you realized that people are mean and hurtful and the world is judgmental and has unrealistic expectations of what we should look like.
Oh yah let me just work out to death until I can have Kate Moss’s bony legs. Or let me go puke out my entire days worth of food so my stomach can look like one of those Victoria Secret Models. Or better yet, let me just not eat, tell myself its okay not to eat, its good not to eat, until I get so sick and so weak I end up in the hospital being fed through an IV drip almost on the verge of dying.
How about no.
Anorexia, Bulimia, Purging, Binging; all eating disorders. Their cause? Mental. I realize it may be dramatic to assume that a person who has an ugly day will then proceed to starve themselves or overeat to compensate for this insecurity, BUT too many girls these days are, and it all starts from waking up one day and thinking you aren’t good enough, that you are ugly, that no matter how or what it does, you will be skinnier, “prettier”, and everyone will then like you better.
Here’s the thing. In what universe does it make sense that hurting your body, starving it, feeding it unsafe supplements, laxatives, and overworking it, will be beneficial to anyone?
And that’s just it.
Right now you are reading this thinking; I know, I could never do that to myself, but you’re also thinking, “does it work?”
And well I guess in a sense yes, it is a fact that if you don’t eat you will lose weight. However, you will also suffer from starvation, shrinking your organs and potentially slowing down your pulse, dehydration, depleting your body of salt and water, leading to possible kidney failure, and weak bones, irregular heart beat, and even heart failure. And here’s the worst one: decrease in sex drive. Now I’ve sold you right?
My point in all of this is I feel these days we focus so much on how we look, and worse, how other’s think we look, that we will do almost anything to fit the bill. Think about it. How many times have you tried to eat a lot less the week before a formal because you wanted your date to think you looked good in your dress? How much more did you think about food before Spring Break? How much more do you think about it before Summer?
It is one thing to be health conscious, but it is another to be obsessive.
In fact, this obsessiveness can sometimes backfire and have a completely opposite effect. The more you think about food, your body, compare it to girls around you, girls on TV, girls on magazines, the more you won’t feel secure with you are. Which will usually lead to stress, which is usually compensated with by eating (not for everyone).
To start, you need to know that you don’t need to look good for anyone but yourself. If you can look at yourself and be happy with who you are, then that is good enough. For anyone who tries to change you, tell you you’re not skinny enough, pretty enough, tall enough. Screw them.
Yes, we are all entitled to ugly days, but that does not make us ugly people.